Life With MS Blog: Five Years Old Today

The Life with MS blog may not be the oldest running blog about Multiple Sclerosis, but in an experiment I conducted this weekend, I found that it’s pretty damned popular!

When I searched (with various search engines) “MS Blog,” “Multiple Sclerosis Blog,” and “Life with MS” our little community was the number one result, every time. (Ok, once MS Magazine’s blog and once an advert for Microsoft’s blog came on top of ours…but still!)

If you would have searched those keywords five years ago, who knows what you would have found. I know that if you had searched my name back in 2005, the only thing you would have found on the web was an old work e-mail address and the testimony I once gave at city hall in the small Washington city where I lived at the time. (I would not recommend that you Google “Trevis Gleason.” The number of pages of results really are absurd!)

Five years ago, Carolynn — the producer of the MS webcasts I was hosting at the time — asked me if I might like to “blog” about living with Multiple Sclerosis. I had no idea what a blog was (and many will say that I still have no idea!), but I said I’d have a go at it.

With the help of Carolynn, Natalie, and Rose, we began to offer a place for conversation about the challenges and the champions of our lives with MS. Those three women have tried to teach me an awful lot about the art and science of blogging. I learned about a fourth of what they offered!

The one thing than none of us could have predicted, or would have been so assuming in such a prediction, was the coalescence of the solid community which has built up in our comments section. Your genuine care for your fellow followers of this blog is beyond what any of us could have dreamed of!

With real compassion and interest, you read one another’s comments, questions, and concerns, and reply like trusted old friends. You understand like no one else possibly could, and you support one another at every turn.

There have been — on more occasions than most of us would care to count — times that you have stood up to those angry with my words, angry about their disease, and angry at who-knows-what, but who decided to take it out in our pages.

You have made this your blog just as much as — if not more than — it is my blog. I couldn’t be more proud of that fact!

With five years and nearly 650 posts, I wish I could say that we’ve covered everything. With people writing in from over 30 countries (and untold numbers who don’t comment), I would have hoped that we could say at the end of five years, “Job well done. Let’s end this thing.” Major-market news outlets having called upon this blog as impetus or resource for several stories might lead one to think that someone else has picked up the ball for us.

Until there are medicines which control our MS progression without dangerous side effects, unless current vascular interventions prove themselves to many hopes, right up to the Eureka moment in a basement lab of some brilliant scientist, not until “they” have figured out a way to repair the damage that MS has done to our nervous systems… Not until we have figured out all three of the “cures,” will there be cause to put a bow on this thing and shut it down.

I don’t know that I’ll be the one to carry the ball all that way; really, we don’t know how far we’re talking here…

I do know that I get more from each and every one of you than you could possibly imagine. Knowing that I’m the guy with the big spoon standing over this amazing conversation is the most humbled I’ve ever been. That you have visited, returned, and trusted this site for five years is proof that MS does cause some cognitive dysfunction!

On March 14, 2006, we opened with the title “It’s All About You — Really,” and my greatest hope is that we’ve stayed on that course. If ever we seem to lose our star, I have perfect faith that you’ll help us bring the helm around and get us back on course. You have in the past.

This is MS Awareness Week, and I know there will be plenty to write about that topic. Taking these few words to acknowledge our milestone together, may be a little bit self-indulgent when so much work is to be done.

Probably…

But if it gives a few people reason to look back at the archives and find a posting or comment on something we’ve covered in the past, then I think our moment of self-pride will not be without worth.

There is work to do, enough looking back. Today we acknowledge five years of the Life With MS Blog. Tomorrow, we begin the sixth.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Trevis Gleason

Trevis L. Gleason is a food journalist and published author, an award-winning chef and culinary instructor who has taught at institutions such as Cornell University, New England Culinary Institute and...read more